Thoughts and ramblings of an ultrarunner. I love long runs because I can think freely.

Sunday, October 5, 2008

They say the mind is the first to go

Today is my 55th birthday. It's on a Sunday, when most marathons are run, and it's a new age group birthday. So what do I decide I want to do on my birthday? Sunday, football, how about lay around the house being waited on hand and foot while I watch football in my underwear and eat as many empty calories as I can? No? Ok, how about letting my family take me out to lunch or dinner, and then watch Sunday Night football? No, ok, how about finding a marathon, oh look, there's one just around 80 miles from Oklahoma city. Let's do that on your birthday. Duh, ok. So that's what I did. Willie , David, and I carpooled down to the Wichita Mountains Wildlife Refuge for the Spirit of Survival Marathon. I told everyone that my goal was to just treat this as an easy training run, and not try to go too fast. But deep down inside I hoped to run under 4 hours. This is a very hilly course and not conductive to running real fast. Nonetheless I was trying to hold around 8:45's for the first half. Even though I knew that I needed to keep my heartrate below 160 I consistently let it climb above that. I ran as hard up hill as I did down. You see where this is going. I ran the first half in around 1:55, I ran the second half in 2:23. Nice little positive split for a finish time of 4:18. Not my worse, but not a great time. About a mile from the end, I was walking at this point, this young lady passes me and says "run with me." Well being a sucker for a pretty young lady, I start running, then it starts getting good to me and I go off and leave her. I hear the speakers ahead, and keep pushing even though my body is now saying slow down and walk some more. I push on to the finish, cross the line and almost pass out. I slowly walked to find somewhere to sit down, and get something to drink. I really felt bad and was a little worried. But after about 5 minutes, I started to feel better. The two guys I rode with both finished top 3 in their age groups so we waited until they could get their medals. I'm grateful for this as I still needed some recovery time. We left the race to find the world famous "Meer's Hamburger" stand. We found it, and had to wait about 30 minutes to get in. I was still a bit unsteady on my feet, so I sat outside until they got a table. After I ate, I felt much much better. I was not impressed by the hamburger, it was good, but not great, a bit dry to me. Anyway, I got home, took a shower and then weighed myself, down 5 pounds, and this is after eating and drinking quite a bit. So I hit the wall because I was not eating enough, but I was feeling full, and really thought I was drinking too much. Anyway, it was an enjoyable day, mainly because of the great company of Willie and David.Happy Birthday to me.